Backing up just in case

Well, I've been backing up my Livejournal posts today onto Blogspot, but it's not going well - I installed Blog2Blog but it only copied 30 out of 1251 posts. Not good!  I'm not really panicking, I have a billion blogs here and there, and ideally I'd like something like Hayden Thorne has, with a blog and a website combined, but have no idea how this is done.  I'm a little nervous of Wordpress as the updating (from what I hear from others) is pretty daunting.

Wrote a little today, but think I need a lot more research.  I am beginning to realise why people stay in their comfort zones--it's much easier to stay in Regency England (particularly London) because I can see it in my head and know the politics and events of the time. When I jump to early Victorian Norfolk, it's rather different. Even the coastline was different then, let alone the people's minds and thoughts and socio-political make-up.  And to think - it's only really about 20-30 years after when I'm used to writing about. Standish finished in about 1823 I believe.

I'm also beginining to realise that I have a real dislike - almost amounting to a phobia - of text books. I don't know why this is--all I can think of is that is goes back to my schooldays or something. I sit down with The Norfolk Broads - a rather massive tome stretching from pre-history, and I just glaze over.  I really wish I was one of these people who loved to read them, it would make my life so very much easier!

Book Four

it  was "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" by Mark Haddon which has rather left me a little ambivalent.

i don't deny that the idea was good, and was spectacularly well executed but it left me rather cold.  Whether this is because I wasn't sure whether I was happy to see someone writing about Aspergers when they weren't a sufferer, or whether the character just didn't instil in me any compassion. I can understand why this is so, too - because we are in Christopher's head and he is necessarily unhooked from everyone.

 

I can see the hypocrisy of me wondering if someone should be writing about someone with such a disability, when I am often banging on about how an author should be getting into anyone's head they like.  The thing is here that I don't know what it achieves--perhaps to get other kids to treat Aspergers sufferers more respectfully. I don't know.

It had a bit too much of a "happy ending" for my liking too, which I don't know if Chris would have felt in that way--he would have just carried on. Would he really think that his life was better because of what he'd gone through or was that something the author inserted?  I think I would have felt that it would have been more honest if Chris had simply been as detached from his family at the end as he ever had been. 

I'm not sure.  However, it did unsettle me - and by doing that, it will be a book that won't easily leave me. I wouldn't smear the same hyperbole on it that the literary giants of the Observer, Guardian and Telegraph did, I can see the Emperor with my own eyes thank you, but I'm glad I read it.

If anyone can explain the paradox about the brown food and the milky way, I'd be grateful - I really don't want to be the billionth person to ask the author that particular question.

Two reviews for Frost Fair/LBR bestsellers

Fallen Angel Reviews:
http://www.fallenangelreviews.com/2008/December/Whitney-FrostFair.htm

Whitney would have liked Thouless to have got some comeuppance, but... well, life don't work like that, I'm afraid.  And if I'd done something horrible to him, he couldn't have appeared in Hard and Fast!  I think that three times will be the charm, and hopefully he'll get his comeuppance in the third instalment. Perhaps he'll meet up with another Irishman..... *grins evilly*

Manic Readers:
http://www.manicreaders.com/index.cfm?disp=reviews&bookid=2897

The reviewer felt it was a little "cold" - heh.  It was typical that I saw the unfavourable aspects of this review and it took a good friend to point out the words "The writing is flawless."  I'd always considered myself an optimist, and I had been concentrating on the bad!

And last time I mentione Linden Bay's bestseller list there were four gay historicals on it (out of 10)  now there are six. SIX OUT OF TEN!